Oil stones and Japanese tools

[Brian]

Recently I've gone the direction of using oil stones on my J tools for working up through medium and wanted to share my results.

This stems from finding coarse synthetics water stones to be an exercise in frustration. I found myself spending the greatest amount of time attempting to move from stone to stone in coarse synthetic water stones while prepping my plane blades for Mokuchi's kez. I found the 320 shapton would go out of flat by looking at it and the 1k cho through 8k were far better but still would provide a limitation which meant that making the jump to Yaginoshima was difficult. My straight edge revealed that I was creating a convex bevel.

So, since then I've switched to oil stones and the problem resolved. I've been using them since without regrets and so the conversation came up recently through PM but I thought I would share here as well.

One my chisels needed a refresh and so here it is;

All work done entirely by hand without jigs.

Here is a chisel after coarse India;



Fine India



Soft Ark - This is where the difference truly stands out for me, this was the point at which most of my frustrations were. This is seriously flat, I can lay precision straight edge on it and/or pick up the stone with stiction.



At this point I normally move to the Yaginoshima on through Nakayama, but I took another step for conversation.

Translucent Ark



Cheers
Brian

[djwong]

Interesting how much contrast there is on the blade from oil stones. Can you estimate the grit of the coarse India stone? Can it remove small chips in the blade? I will use synthetic waterstone stones from a #220 "pink brick", up through a Shapton Pro #2000. From there I depend on natural water stones.

[Brian]

Certainly, it's about 220 grit, but it starts to behave more like 600 grit after a quick break in. Flattening with a 140 atoma keeps it lively but still around 600grit give or take.

I plan to pick up a carborundum for the really rough work (I have some chisel setup to do soon).

[Chris Hall]

I've been using the Chosera 600 grit stone as my coarsest, and found it works well and keeps flatness well. I don't see a need to go coarser than that unless you chip a blade badly.

[Brian]

Takes a while if you run your straight edge over it as I did last night. I will add a carborundum for when I do some bone head thing like that again.

[Chris Hall]

If I get a bad chip from some mishap then I joint the edge down until the chip is gone using the 600 Chosera, then hit the stationary belt sander and then diamond plate to take the bevel down. I have found that the jointed tip greatly reduces the chance of damaging the edge from heat on the sander. With the above, tapping out as necessary too of course.

I've never liked oil stones much as I don't want to work with kerosene or other oils in my shop. Also, a lot of oil stones are on the small side. Interested to read about your adventures however.

[Brian]

That's a good idea to joint the edge before proceeding.

No stationary belt sander for me, unfortunately. I actually own one, but it's at my father's shop where I can make a bit more of a mess without worry. I'd like to move it to mine and provide it some metal capable dust collection.

What was really driving me crazy was flattening the stones every lap, without running water in my workshop it makes it a tedious process. And of course the shapton 320, from what I understand, is notoriously friable.

I'm with you on the kerosene, I won't work with it and a few people on other boards have mentioned that it bothers them after prolonged contact. I use food safe mineral oil.

[Vips]

In contrast to water stones, do the oil stones you have require regularly flattening during a sharpening phase?

I've used coarse paper on a granite surface. The sand paper doesn't last very long but usually does the trick.

I was at one point considering a Tormek to hollow the bevel and then return the bevel to flat on a 1k stone, although I'm not sure how long this would take, although I'd imagine a water wheel wouldn't upset the metal too much.

Thanks for sharing Brian, this is very interesting.

[Brian]

They do however with longer intervals between flattening.

The issue with grinding a hollow first is that you will remove much of the supporting jigane, which means that the remaining jigane will wear rapidly causing you to decrease your bevel angle.

With a full flat bevel if measures are not taken to prevent the bevel from becoming more shallow it will do so, so removing much of the supporting material will exacerbate the problem.

I hesitate to recommend after so few hours but the carborundum stones do the trick. Nothing works especially fast on steel at the extreme end of the hardness scale, but it moves along at a decent pace. I like that they do the coarse work without dubbing the edges which makes transitioning to the next stone very time consuming.

The positive of these stones in my experience are that I can move quickly from stone to stone after the rough work is completed, reducing the overall time spent and with a better end result.

[Hugh]

Brian,

Thanks for posting the steps on the forum. A couple questions that I've just thought of reading through your sequence...

Are you putting a small micro bevel during the final trans ark stage or in the soft ark stage?

For rehoning which stone do you begin with?

Cheers, Hugh